No theory can make a software update a hardware upgrade.
Insofar as accounting is reality-agnostic, that's not strictly true. Software is acting as a proxy for the combination of hardware + software in this situation. It does not depict the actual sequence of events as observed externally, but that has never been the issue here.
Losing a dollar off that to keep the customers happy is totally worthwhile.
Not if it's not an option available to you. In order to report new functionality in products you've already shipped, you have to distribute same externally. That means you must take in new revenue to report an upgrade. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The rebate idea is an interesting one, however, with some potential merit to it, but again, processing the rebate would then become an issue. It couldn't be an instant rebate, because then there would be no transaction. Retail stores can do instant rebates, but that's because they recognize the revenue from the manufacturer. Apple can't do that any more than it can just shift money around internally at this point (that ship sailed some time ago).
If Apple choses to go the currently stated path and charge $2 and piss off a hundred thousand or so of it's customers it's going to make this shareholder wonder why they don't care about repeat sales which are worth far more than $5.
They've no right to be pissed off. They were never offered any functionality beyond the face value of the specifications they agreed to accept in exchange for money. I'd be more annoyed that they caved to a bunch of whining idiots.
The man pages describe all the 802.11n settings.
The man pages describe 802.11n settings without making any assumption about whether you have the appropriate hardware. Man pages are the same for all hardware configurations; they're not dynamically modified by your machine. It's a manual for software use, not for hardware features.
The hardware for 802.11n is already there.
Not officially. That's the whole problem. From the perspective of the paper trail, customers suddenly have new hardware. Apple has to find a way to update its hardware features without admitting to a material misstatement. That means writing the n-mode off as a paid, feature upgrade.
The resolution is actually a good analogy - both higher resolution and higher network speeds require a modification to the modulation of a signal and both increase the bandwidth of the signal - which is why you typically need new hardware to support things like these.
No, it's not. 802.11n is more than added bandwidth. The real capacity of 802.11g chipsets is adequate for 802.11n, but you can't upgrade .11g cards to .11n. They have to have specialized .11n hardware in them. You don't need any specialized hardware for new resolutions, you just need enough throughput to drive the pixels.
1) DVD single layer DVD-burners that were later updated to double layer when the standards were completed.
That's not an accurate reflection of the series of events. I recall that dual-layer standards were finished long before any of the drives were available, and that certain drives manufactured subsequently were simply made compatible with the media, just as periodic ROM updates add compatibility for new types. They were always capable of focusing on multiple layers, there just wasn't any media available for it.
3) Bootcamp adding full Windows functioning for free.
Bootcamp is purely software.
When Draft-N came out, Asus even released early and gave their customers a guarantee that it would work on future final N systems. Apple could have did that.
No, because Asus released its products with draft-n drivers. They worked out of the box and were assured that customers would have final n-support. Apple, on the other hand, had no software at shipping time, so it could not have made the same commitment. You can't ship a product with an advertised feature that doesn't work. Asus draft-n cards worked immediately at draft-n performance. Apple's hardware was ready before the software.
But, they are not forced by law to charge us.
They believe they are, or they wouldn't be doing this. You have no demonstrated any reason why it's not required by law, while myself and several others have elucidated why a strict interpretation of the law would motivate this series of actions. There is always a possibility that they could not charge and not get caught, but step one of risk management is risk avoidance.
